{"id":18074,"date":"2023-06-30T12:21:14","date_gmt":"2023-06-30T16:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?p=18074"},"modified":"2023-06-30T12:21:14","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T16:21:14","slug":"southern-baptist-convention-amends-constitution-to-confirm-office-of-pastor-for-men-only","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/southern-baptist-convention-amends-constitution-to-confirm-office-of-pastor-for-men-only","title":{"rendered":"Southern Baptist Convention Amends Constitution to Confirm Office of Pastor for Men Only"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_16213\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-16213\" style=\"width: 768px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2022\/11\/church-credit-pixabay-pexels-scaled.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-16213\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2022\/11\/church-credit-pixabay-pexels-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"church\" width=\"768\" height=\"576\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-16213\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pixabay\/Pexels.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) held its annual meeting on June 13th, with the most pressing matter on the agenda being the confirmed \u201cdisfellowship\u201d of two churches for having female pastors and amending the SBC constitution to ensure that the office of pastor remained for men only. Rick Warren\u2019s Saddleback Church was one of the two churches <\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/news\/2023\/february\/saddleback-church-southern-baptist-sbc-disfellowship-female.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">expelled from the SBC<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u00a0after the church ordained three women in the role of pastor in 2021. The other church was Fern Creek in Louisville, KY, where Linda Barnes Popham has served as pastor since 1993. Both congregations were appealing the SBC\u2019s decision for disfellowship out of five churches that had been expelled last year. The SBC also voted by a two-thirds majority to amend its constitution that the SBC \u201cAffirms, appoints, or employs only men as any kind of pastor or elder.\u201d This expanded the position of elder to be for men only in the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, which states, \u201cThe office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.\u201d Saddleback and Fern Creek will continue as churches but will no longer be part of the SBC. The amendment will have to be confirmed next year by another two-thirds majority to take effect.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Rick Warren, who <\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/2022\/09\/rick-warren-delivers-a-final-message-recalling-his-purpose-driven-origins.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">retired<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u00a0from pastoring Saddleback last June, defended Saddleback\u2019s decision to ordain\u00a0<\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2023\/03\/rick-warren-shares-what-changed-his-mind-on-female-pastors.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">female pastors<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u00a0at the meeting. \u201cWe should remove churches for all kinds of sexual sin, racial sin, financial sin and leadership sin \u2013 sins that harm the testimony of our convention,\u201d he\u00a0<\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.al.com\/news\/2023\/06\/rick-warrens-impassioned-speech-to-southern-baptists-women-pastors-have-not-sinned.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">stated<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">, saying that churches with women pastors \u201chave not sinned.\u201d \u201cIf doctrinal disagreements between Baptists are considered a sin, we all get kicked out,\u201d he added. Popham stated she has been serving in church since she was a teenager and stated that her church was adhering to a 1963 version of the Baptist Faith and Message, which did not restrict the role of pastor to men. \u201cWe have a faith and practice that identifies more closely with the Baptist Faith and Message than many other Southern Baptist churches, and I am personally more conservative than most Southern Baptist pastors I know,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Jess Gaul, who grew up in a Southern Baptist church and now ministers at Washington Community Fellowship in Washington, DC., told <\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2023\/06\/21\/us\/southern-baptist-convention-women-pastors-react-cec\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">CNN<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u00a0that the decision saddened her. \u201cThere are women who have served faithfully in Southern Baptist churches for centuries,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd they will continue to, but they will not get the recognition that they\u2019re due, or their gifts will not hold the same value for the church.\u201d The point of contention about the position of pastor comes from 1 Timothy 2:12, where Paul states, \u201cI do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.\u201d (ESV) Other churches point to prominent roles women had in the early church, such as Mary Magdalene seeing Jesus first and Christian converts Priscilla and Aquila being mentioned as leading a church together, as evidence that women were allowed to have pastoral positions. SBC President Bart Barber defended the decision at a press conference, saying, \u201cWe\u2019re shaped by what we read in the New Testament and Southern Baptists, just as we said in the year 2000, when we last amended the Baptist Faith and Message, we\u2019ve reiterated that over the course of this meeting, that we believe that the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by scripture.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) held its annual meeting on June 13th, with the most pressing matter on the agenda being the confirmed \u201cdisfellowship\u201d of two churches for having female pastors and amending the SBC constitution to ensure that the office of pastor remained for men only. Rick Warren\u2019s Saddleback Church was one of the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":16213,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Southern Baptist Convention Amends Constitution to Confirm Office of Pastor for Men Only<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Southern Baptist Convention expelled two churches for having female pastors.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/southern-baptist-convention-amends-constitution-to-confirm-office-of-pastor-for-men-only\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Southern Baptist Convention Amends Constitution to Confirm Office of Pastor for Men Only\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Southern Baptist Convention expelled two churches for having female pastors.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/southern-baptist-convention-amends-constitution-to-confirm-office-of-pastor-for-men-only\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-06-30T16:21:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2022\/11\/church-credit-pixabay-pexels-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"768\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"576\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Cecilia Buchanan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Southern Baptist Convention Amends Constitution to Confirm Office of Pastor for Men Only","description":"The Southern Baptist Convention expelled two churches for having female pastors.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/southern-baptist-convention-amends-constitution-to-confirm-office-of-pastor-for-men-only","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Southern Baptist Convention Amends Constitution to Confirm Office of Pastor for Men Only","og_description":"The Southern Baptist Convention expelled two churches for having female pastors.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/southern-baptist-convention-amends-constitution-to-confirm-office-of-pastor-for-men-only","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2023-06-30T16:21:14+00:00","og_image":[{"width":768,"height":576,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2022\/11\/church-credit-pixabay-pexels-scaled.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Cecilia Buchanan","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/southern-baptist-convention-amends-constitution-to-confirm-office-of-pastor-for-men-only","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/southern-baptist-convention-amends-constitution-to-confirm-office-of-pastor-for-men-only","name":"Southern Baptist Convention Amends Constitution to Confirm Office of Pastor for Men Only","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/southern-baptist-convention-amends-constitution-to-confirm-office-of-pastor-for-men-only#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/southern-baptist-convention-amends-constitution-to-confirm-office-of-pastor-for-men-only#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2022\/11\/church-credit-pixabay-pexels-scaled.jpg","datePublished":"2023-06-30T16:21:14+00:00","dateModified":"2023-06-30T16:21:14+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/77cb6eeb5c74ee0eb8c77ea1ebc43c6a"},"description":"The Southern Baptist Convention expelled two churches for having female pastors.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/southern-baptist-convention-amends-constitution-to-confirm-office-of-pastor-for-men-only#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/southern-baptist-convention-amends-constitution-to-confirm-office-of-pastor-for-men-only"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/southern-baptist-convention-amends-constitution-to-confirm-office-of-pastor-for-men-only#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2022\/11\/church-credit-pixabay-pexels-scaled.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2022\/11\/church-credit-pixabay-pexels-scaled.jpg","width":768,"height":576,"caption":"Pixabay\/Pexels.com"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/southern-baptist-convention-amends-constitution-to-confirm-office-of-pastor-for-men-only#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Southern Baptist Convention Amends Constitution to Confirm Office of Pastor for Men Only"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/77cb6eeb5c74ee0eb8c77ea1ebc43c6a","name":"Leigh Pizzutilla","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/824\/82495162063119d033794eb2206a0067x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/824\/82495162063119d033794eb2206a0067x96.jpg","caption":"Leigh Pizzutilla"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/lpizzutilla"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18074"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18080,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18074\/revisions\/18080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}